Singularity: Star Carrier: Book Three (27 page)

“Are you?”

“Of course I am! I still remember . . .” He broke off the thought, suddenly uncertain.

“And if your memories had been changed,” his AI replied, “how would you know the difference?”

For a long time, Gray brooded in the darkness.

And after a time, his AI spoke again. “I have an incoming transmission. I believe the Sh’daar are attempting to continue the conversation.”

Gray drew a deep breath. He’d been shaken by his conversation with the fighter’s AI, and didn’t feel particularly able to discuss
anything
with his captors.

But he knew he had to try.

“Let’s see it,” he said.

A window opened in his mind, and he stepped through. He stood once again on that dark and icy plain beneath ten million closely crowded stars. The world’s surface was utterly barren and dead. He looked around for Schiere, but saw nothing, sensed nothing. The other pilot, evidently, was not a part of this conversation.

“Hello?” Gray called. “Is anyone there?”

And then he saw the flat, oval body semi-erect on sixteen jointed legs picking its way toward him across the frozen ground, velvet-skinned, four-eyed, disturbingly spiderlike. An Agletsch.

“Dra’ethde?” Gray asked, peering closely at the apparition’s body markings. He’d only ever known two Agletsch, the two on board
America
, and telling them apart by the subtle differences in their body markings was tricky. This one appeared to have more males adhering to what passed for her face, however.

“I am called Thedreh’schul,” the being replied in his mind. “And my masters wish to know what you are, yes-no?”

CIC

TC/USNA CVS
America

TRGA and Omega Centauri

1401 hours, TFT

According to
America
’s chronometers, the carrier had been inside the tunnel for 7 minutes, now, and for much of that time she’d been traveling—judging by the light show outside—at close to the speed of light. The math of relativistic velocities said that 7 minutes subjective at near-c translated as something closer to 495 minutes objective—well over 8 hours.

Obviously, the rotating cylinder was not more than 8 light hours long; the physics people were calling it a stable Lorentzian wormhole, obviously artificial, obviously created as a bridge between the Texaghu Resch system and Omega Centauri. There was no way to actually measure the passage of time, save to count down to an emergence based on the data from young Gray’s message drone. According to that . . . 10 more seconds.

“All hands, all hands,” Captain Buchanan’s voice called over the shipwide net.
America
’s shields and screens went to full, cutting off even the limited view they’d had for the past subjective minutes. “Stand by for entry into normal space, in five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”

America
’s shields opened once more, and Koenig had his first direct view of the other side—a sky filled with stars and with ships. There’d been the very distinct possibility that they would emerge within a military disaster, finding every Confederation vessel that had already gone through blasted into debris, and the enemy waiting for them, weapons focused on the tunnel mouth.

But the door-kicking strategy, evidently, had worked.
America
slowed sharply in a blaze of raw light, drifting now into a diffuse haze of gas, ice particles, and floating debris
 
. . . as well as small and disorganized groups of Confederation fighters, frigates, and destroyers. Numerous ships in the area were badly damaged—the
Cheng Hua
was leaking water, and the
Gurrierre
appeared to be little more than a slow-tumbling hulk. The floating wreckage gave silent evidence of the ferocity of the battle. Fighting was still going on in the distance, but the volume of battlespace close to the tunnel mouth had been secured.

“CAG, you may launch your CSP,” Captain Buchanan ordered over
America
’s tactical net.

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

They’d kept the slower, older SG-55 War Eagles on board for Combat Space Patrol, an envelope of fighters surrounding the battlegroup as an outer perimeter against enemy leakers, ships that might slip in close enough to do serious damage. Two squadrons, the Star Tigers and the Nighthawks, began dropping from
America
’s rotating flight decks. Both squadrons were at dangerously low strength; the War Eagles, less advanced than the newer Starhawks, had suffered badly at Alphekka. CAG Wizewski had estimated that they might have one last patrol in them before he was forced to close both squadrons out. The pilots were willing; their ships were falling apart.

America
moved clear of the tunnel mouth. The other carriers in the battlegroup were beginning to emerge, now—the
Abraham Lincoln
and the
United States of America
, followed by the Pan-European
Illustrious
and the
Jeanne d’Arc
.

Koenig turned a coldly professional gaze toward the French light carrier. The damage she’d taken at HD 157950 had been repaired, and her water reserves replaced by cometary ice from that system’s Kuiper Belt. The mutiny that had brought her over to Koenig’s side, however, still worried him. Captain Michel had appeared convincingly genuine in his conviction to join CBG-18, but the man had turned against his own government. Could he be trusted?

As much, Koenig supposed, as anyone in the fleet. After all, Michel had had a choice; he could have returned freely to Earth with Giraurd.

He watched as the electronic links between ships was established, and the battlegroup’s tactical net came back on-line. The door-kickers had suffered serious casualties—the
Santiago
,
Defensora
,
Vreeland
, and
Brown
all destroyed, the
King
,
Fletcher
and the
Ishigara
badly damaged. The fighters . . . well, there
were
still fighters left, Koenig was glad to see. It would take time to sort through the network feeds and see what the butcher’s bill had been.

“Admiral Koenig,” his AI said in
her
voice. “The commanding—”

“Stop!”
Koenig said, cutting off the PA in mid-sentence. The anger in his own voice startled him. “Just . . . stop.” What had just touched him off? That kind of unthinking, harsh reaction was not like him.

The AI waited, silent.

“I’m sorry,” Koenig said, feeling awkward about apologizing to a piece of software. “Go ahead.”

“Sir, the commanding officer of the
Gurrierre
is on-line.”

“Put him on.”

“Admiral Koenig?” a voice said, speaking with a strong French accent. There was no video. “This is Lieutenant Blaison.”

“Lieutenant?” Koenig asked. “What happened . . . oh.”

“The senior officers all are dead or missing,” Blaison replied. He sounded terribly young. “The bridge tower was destroyed. Some of them may have survived in life pods, but—”

“I understand. How can we be of assistance?”

“I have given the order to abandon ship, Admiral. The power plant is unstable and may decouple at any moment. If you could send some of your Search and Rescue craft to pick up the crew . . .”

Koenig glanced at his ship status readout. Both SAR squadrons, the Jolly Blacks and the DinoSARS, were already launching. “I’ll deploy some rescue tugs to help you, Lieutenant.”

“Many thanks, Admiral. We—”

And the communications link winked out.

On one of his large CIC displays, Koenig could see the
Gurrierre
, terribly damaged, her rear half broken and torn, her forward shield cap missing. A point about a third from what was left of the stern was twisting . . .
crumpling
as the micro black hole at the heart of
Gurrierre
’s power plant broke free of its containment field and drifted through the ship’s structure, devouring it as it went.

Power plant singularities were tiny—the size of an atomic nucleus—and could not devour their parent vessels quickly. But this one was loose and feeding, and the gravitational distortions were disrupting the ship’s structure, a crumpling effect slowly moving forward.

And as the singularity moved, it fed . . . and grew. A fierce point of X-ray radiation was flaring from the stricken bombardment vessel, now, as the atoms of the ship’s spine fell into the absolute nothingness of the tiny black hole.

Escape pods were drifting out from the Pan-European ship now, drive jets flaring to get them clear. She had a crew of almost a thousand. How many would be able to get off?

“CAG?” Koenig called.

“Yes, sir.”

“Direct Commander Corbin to send SAR tugs to help the
Gurrierre
. They’re abandoning ship.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Corbin was the CO of the DinoSARs. “Let him know there’s a loose singularity over there. Things will be going critical fast.”

“I’ll tell him, sir.”

America
continued accelerating gently, moving deeper into cluster space.

Koenig’s heart was hammering, and he tried to figure out what he was feeling. Why the hell had he snapped at Karyn like that?

No,
not
Karyn. His PA. Software with Karyn Mendelson’s digitized personality overlaying the basic code.

Debris adrift in space . . .

For just a moment, he was back at the Defense of Earth . . . when Karyn, the
real
Karyn, had died at the Mars Synchorbital Station when a high-velocity kinetic-kill projectile smashed through the structure.

Six months.
God
, he missed her.

But his personal assistant was right, he knew. He wasn’t quite sure what had just happened, but seeing that field of debris after the savage battle had pulled something in him, some deep-buried thread of emotion connected with Karyn’s death.

He couldn’t afford to let that kind of emotional storm get in the way when he was in command of the battlegroup.

He also couldn’t do anything about it just now. The ship’s sensors had detected an enemy vessel approaching from the nadir, a massive cigar-shaped vessel with odd flutings and sponsons. If it had been Turusch, it would have been an Alpha-class battleship, but it was not a Turusch design, not any design ever recorded in Confederation warbooks. The unknown was accelerating at several gravities, and was on an intercept vector with the
America
.

He heard Buchanan giving orders. “We have a lone raider, coming in on our keel. Let’s get some fighters down there, Wize.”

“Yes, sir. Deploying the Nighthawks to intercept.”

There were eight Nighthawks left . . . not enough to take out a battleship. He gave orders to a pair of destroyers, the
Adams
and the
Trumbull
, to support
America
.

“Admiral Koenig?” Buchanan said. “Request permission to maneuver the ship.”

“Granted,” Koenig replied. He knew what Buchanan had in mind. Right now,
America
’s two spinal-mount launch tubes weren’t being used to toss fighters into space. Instead, they’d been reconfigured in their secondary role as magnetic railguns, capable of firing either kinetic-kill slugs or nuclear warheads at very high acceleration.

At Buchanan’s order, the ponderous carrier began swinging 90 degrees through space, bringing her massive shield cap into line with the enemy battlewagon, which was still nearly a thousand kilometers off.

War Eagles streaked past the turning carrier, vectoring on the approaching enemy vessel.

Damn it, this was going to be close.

Chapter Eighteen

30 June 2405

Trevor Gray

Omega Centauri

1408 hours, TFT

W
ithin the virtual reality unfolding in his brain, Trevor Gray spoke with the Agletsch. “Are . . . are you real?”

“Answering that question requires the answer to a previous question,” the spidery being replied. “What do you mean by ‘real’?”

Gray himself wasn’t sure of the answer to that. Meeting humans within virtual conference rooms could be confusing enough, especially if you didn’t know whether the other person was a personal assistant or a part of the digital reality within which you found yourself. Even a human avatar—the digital representation of the other person—might not be “real,” in terms of what they appeared to be wearing or even how they looked.

“I guess what I mean is . . . are you an organic being, a flesh-and-blood Agletsch somewhere on this ship? Or are you a simulation of some kind?”

“An interesting distinction. I represent a living Agletsch, Thedreh’schul, as I have already mentioned, but the organic Thedreh’schul is not available. I reside within the Sh’daar archives at their operational center at Gahvrahnetch.”

The name meant nothing to Gray, not that he expected the alien to give away anything important in the way of military intelligence. Of more interest was the idea of a Sh’daar archive. What did they store there . . . digitized personalities?

“I learned something about your culture during trade negotiations with your people some seventy
gurvedh
ago,” the Agletsch continued. She touched the silvery device adhering to her velvety skin just below her four weirdly stalked eyes. “And, of course, I possess a translator allowing you to hear me in your language. I was told that you requested the presence of one of my kind, and was routed here.”

“It didn’t take you long to arrive,” Gray mused. “About three hours. This archive you mention must be pretty close by.”

He was fishing. Any scrap of data, however insignificant, might be useful. Presumably, it had taken an hour and a half for the call to reach the archive, and another hour and a half for the return. That might mean that Gahvrahnetch was one and a half light hours distant . . . within a very nearby star system, or it could refer to that free world he’d glimpsed earlier, before his capture.

Of course, there might be other TRGA cylinders nearby, allowing shortcuts across tens of thousands of light years. If so, the Sh’daar archive might literally be anywhere, even halfway across the galaxy.

And Thedreh’schul said nothing to narrow down the choices.

“My masters wish to know what you are,” she told him. “It is their belief that you are a member of a species they refer to as
Nah-voh-grah-nu-greh Trafhyedrefschladreh
. That translates as 20,415-carbon-oxygen-water, and describes your species within their encoding system.”

“ ‘Nah-vuh-gruh—’ ”

“Nah-voh-grah-nu-greh Trafhyedrefschladreh
. The 20,415th species they have encountered with carbon biochemistry, using oxygen for metabolism and liquid water as a polar solvent and internal transport medium. At least, that is your number in base ten.”

“We call ourselves ‘humans,’ ” Gray said.
“Homo sapiens.”

“I know. I recognized your species as soon as we connected. Some fourteen billion of you occupy the third and fourth worlds of a yellow star some nine thousand light-
gurvedh
distant from here. I have already informed my masters of that fact.” And the alien faded from the simulation.

“Wait!” Gray called. “Wait! Come back!”

The Agletsch reappeared. “My contribution here is concluded.”

“No it isn’t! I want to talk with the Sh’daar!”

“Human, one does not
talk
with the Sh’daar. One does what one is told, while hoping that no more is demanded of her.”

“They might need you,” he suggested. “If they intend to question me, they’ll need to have someone on hand who understands us. Can speak with us.” Gray hesitated, then decided to take a chance. “They’re scared of us right now, aren’t they?”

“Why do you suggest such a thing?”

“My fleet, my people, they’re getting a bit close for comfort, I would imagine.” By now, the carrier battlegroup would have secured the Texaghu Resch side of the TRGA cylinder. It was even possible that the fleet had come through already, that it was fighting now within just a few thousand kilometers of his prison. If Admiral Koenig had been able to make use of the data on that message drone, he might have figured a way to come through and take out those three fortresses.

And even if he’d not, the fact that the Battlegroup
America
was now on the other side of the TRGA, seven subjective minutes away, would have to make the Sh’daar a bit nervous. It seemed likely, Gray thought, that they’d wondered who and what he was because humans shouldn’t be here at all. Species 20,415-carbon-oxygen-water had been on the defensive for thirty-eight years, after all, falling back from system after system as the Sh’daar client races had kept pushing. For that species to suddenly show up on the Sh’daar’s doorstep, after winning sharp and unexpected victories at Arcturus and Alphekka . . . yeah, the Sh’daar might very well be scratching their equivalent of heads and questioning whether or not humans could be behind the sudden reversals.

“How did you know that your fleet has arrived in this region of space?” the Agletsch asked.

Score!
Gray
hadn’t
known, but he did now. Admiral Koenig had come through to get him!

Well . . . perhaps the battlegroup hadn’t arrived solely for Gray, but the thrill of the moment set the virtual hairs at the back of his neck standing straight. He realized that he’d felt a lot less lonely when he’d learned that Schiere was a prisoner here as well, that he was not the only human within eighteen thousand light years.

It was even better knowing that the fleet was close by.

“We have our ways,” Gray said. His attempt at being mysterious sounded sophomoric to his own ears, but perhaps it would have a different effect on the aliens.

The virtual image of the Agletsch didn’t move for a long moment, its usually restless stalked eyes motionless, and Gray wondered if it was in fact in conversation with its “masters.” Koenig had come through the tunnel to rescue him and Schiere!

Realistically, Gray knew that it wasn’t that simple. Admiral Koenig would not have risked the entire battlegroup—fifty-eight ships and nearly fifty thousand men and women—for two lost pilots. The very nature of command in war demanded the sacrifice of a few, from time to time, to win the greater success by many.

The logic, however, didn’t matter at the moment. Growing up in the Manhat Ruins, out on the Periphery of the old United States, Gray had learned early and well the lesson that those in authority didn’t much care for
individuals
, especially when those individuals were cut off from easy access and inconvenient to reach. After rising sea levels and the Fall of Wormwood had turned old New York City, Washington, and a dozen other major cities into partially submerged wilderness areas, the U.S. government had found it easier and cheaper to withdraw from the drowned coastlands and focus dwindling reserves on what was left. The Ruins became havens for outcasts, rebels, gangs, and individuals, outside the reach of civilization and law.

Of course, the human squatties living among the shattered concrete towers above sea-filled canyons had preferred it that way. The less intrusive, the less heavy-handed and demanding the government Authority, the better. If they paid a price for that isolation—lawless gangs, uncertain harvests in the rooftop gardens, no health care, no power grid, no Net for communications or data downloads—it was a price they usually paid willingly in exchange for freedom. All of them knew that they could come in at any time. All that was required was that they accept the implants, the edentities, the credimplants, the rules and regulations and responsibilities of modern civilization.

Gray himself had deliberately sacrificed his Prim’s freedom to save Angela’s life. As it turned out, he’d sacrificed Angela herself, when the stroke and the medical treatment for the stroke had
changed
her.

He bit off a curse, turning from the unbidden memory that still burned, raw and flaming. It
had
been his choice.

The point was that Gray was simply unable to expect that authority in
any
form would ever come to his rescue. From experience, he’d learned that Admiral Koenig and the other senior officers of the battlegroup
did
care, that they did their best to live up to the ancient dictum of
no person left behind
.

It was one thing to know that, and quite another to feel it.

There was something about that train of thought, though, that was nagging at him, something important.

He was aware, of course, that anyone linked into this simulation could follow those of his thoughts that he brought to the point of internal vocalization. There were nanoreceptors, part of the network of implants that linked him with the outside world, in place along the laryngeal nerve that picked up and translated speech signals from the brain.
Thinking
words was as good as speaking them, so far as his nanoimplant was concerned. His AI was aware of what he subvocalized . . . and so were the creators of this virtual reality. He’d sensed the Agletsch “hearing” his momentary, internal monologue as he’d thought about Angela and life in the Manhat Ruins. There’d been a kind of expectancy, of anticipation as they’d followed his thoughts. Presumably, the Agletsch was passing it all on, with suitable translation, to her Sh’daar masters.

Why would they be interested in
that
?

“My masters
are
curious,” the Agletsch said after a moment, still following Gray’s thoughts. “You appear to have been . . . abandoned, yes-no?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You—and those like you—were abandoned by the technological adepts.”

“So?”

“It is possible that you and the Sh’daar masters share something, a common experience. They had not thought that such a thing was possible. They . . . wish to explore this matter with you.”

Thedreh’schul sounded vastly surprised.

CIC

TC/USNA CVS
America

Omega Centauri

1409 hours, TFT

“Main batteries fire!” Buchanan commanded.

Koenig felt the lurch, a slight jar, transmitted through the deck of the CIC as the carrier’s twin spinal launch tubes hurled a pair of condensed matter projectiles toward the approaching enemy battleship. Port and starboard launch tubes fired at the same instant, but with slightly different accelerations. This gave the projectiles slightly different muzzle velocities, which in turn allowed different arrival times on target.

The launches were close enough to simultaneous that
America
felt a single recoil, and powerful enough to jolt the lumbering carrier as she cruised directly toward the enemy behemoth, bow-on, and slow her somewhat. With the target at a range of just over eight hundred kilometers, the starboard projectile would reach the target a fraction of a second before the port, fifty-six seconds after launch.

“Light them up!” Buchanan ordered. “Suppression beams! Everything that will bear!”

America
’s forward shield cap blocked the carrier from firing her smaller, turret-mounted barriers directly ahead, but a ring of small lasers mounted around the cap’s perimeter could paint the enemy battleship with coherent ultraviolet light. UV lasers by themselves could not penetrate the enemy vessel’s powerful screens, but they
would
snap those screens opaque and dazzle any mast-mounted sensors, as well as help
America
’s tactical department to pick up any warheads coming back the other way. Working in close-linked concert with
America
’s tactical department, the destroyers
Adams
and
Trumbull
closed in as well, firing high-energy lasers and particle-beam weapons.

The idea was to keep the enemy from spotting those approaching projectiles until it was too late to do anything about them. The blunt prow of the approaching ship started to swing aside at the last moment . . . but too little, too late. Just over fifty-six seconds after firing, the first projectile slammed home.

The projectiles were KK warheads, relying on kinetic force alone for their destructive power. At over fourteen thousand meters per second, each warhead carried a devastating punch. The first struck the enemy vessel’s gravitic shields, which shredded the compressed, high-density metal, but no shielding could hold against that much tightly focused force. Energy leaked through—enough to knock out large sections of its shield projector grid and have enough left over to vaporize a crater in the alien vessel’s bow.